Aviation and the Belgian Climate Policy : Integration Options and Impacts ABC Impacts Synthesis ABC Impacts project results and forthcoming work Workshop on aviation scenarios and climate impacts 26 March 2010
Draft final report September 2009 Not public but available on request Revised by external experts Public final report ABC Impacts : end July 2010
Market trends
All transport modes in EU(27) from 1995 to 2007 Passengers: +22,3% (aviation +70,4%, maritime -7,7%) Freight: +38% (aviation +55%, maritime +37%) Impact of the 2008 economic crisis on aviation Source: Eurocontrol Short-Term Forecast: IFR Flight Movements 2009-2010, Brussels
Global trends by 2028 (Boeing): High growth in activity with better productivity of aircraft Asia Pacific region will represent more than 41% of the total traffic (now 32%) Trends in Europe (Eurocontrol): Rapid trains could reduce global passenger air traffic between major European city-pairs ESRA traffic in 2030 should be 1,7 to 2,2 times 2007 traffic Impacts of crisis less important for the aviation sector in Eastern European countries ; in average, delay of 4 years in the traffic volume expectations (=> -14% than expected in 2014 and -12% in 2030) Belgium-Luxembourg (Eurocontrol): Observed traffic reduction in LTOs and overflights (crisis, DHL, etc.) Growth in overflights expected to be greater than for LTOs
Based on Belgocontrol flight DB + own calculations
Technology improvements and emission trends
Improvements (R&D and ATM) not sufficient to balance aviation climate impacts due to sharp traffic increase anticipated by 2030-2050 Alternative fuels raise many questions: Climate impact from production and availability for aviation? Competition with food and risk of deforestation (agrofuels)? Increase of non-co 2 aviation climate impacts (especially H 2 )? => Priority should be given to no-regret principle: Fuel consumption reduction (aircraft weight reduction, improved routing and ground operations, etc.) Lowering S-content of fuel (impacts on contrail-cirrus physical properties and improves local air quality)
Aviation climate impacts
Relative climate impact as a function of flight attitude (CO 2 radiative forcing is used as reference) Source: Öko-Institut ev, Emissions trading in international civil aviation, 2004, p.62
Schematic representation of the Schmidt-Appleman criterion for the formation of linear and persistent contrails -orange curve = water saturation limit as a function of temperature and partial water vapour pressure - blue curve = ice saturation limit - green area = range of ambient conditions for which linear contrails can be formed - red area (ice-supersaturated) = ambient conditions for which persistent contrails can be formed.
Difference of the high cloud cover between a run with contrails and the reference run (in % of coverage) average on 2005 distribution of flight movements is based on AERO2k (Eyers et al., 2002)
Consequences of mitigation in aviation sector on emissions available for other sectors considering global +2 C stabilisation (JCM model) See: www.climate.be/jcm
Climate policy options and Multi Criteria Analysis
EU Directive including aviation into the EU-ETS But Only CO 2 taken into account Applied only to flights arriving in / departing from a EU country Therefore Comparison of other policy options according to different criteria (MCA) Objectives: study characteristics of potential policy mixes and make recommendations to Belgian policy makers
Work in progress
Regional Climate Modelling MCA and policy mixes Emission calculator => Final public report (end July 2010)
Main preliminary conclusions
From the Belgian point of view Taking into account climate impacts due to overflights (mainly AIC) along with the impacts from national LTOs Putting emphasis on operational measures (e.g. reduce AIC formation) and modal shift for main intra-eu travels From the global point of view Stabilising global warming at +2 C without impeding other sectors development too much implies that aviation has to reduce its total climate impact Considering that AIC has a greater climate impact than NO x (AIC on the same order of magnitude as CO 2 from aviation) From both points of view Ignoring non-co 2 aviation climate impacts will reduce climate policy measures effectiveness and could even worsen aviation climate impacts (cf. several trade-offs)
Many thanks for your attention! Any questions? More details and information available on : http://www.climate.be/abci